Ner's Random Musings on a life of interesting insights

a world of interesting factoids about nothing and everything

August 2nd, 2012

welcome to the jungle, for real. @ 10:42 am

Well, we made it, finally! Everyone's up right now, but we're not doing anything so I'm writing.

We got here last night, after several delays and fun times, at about 11:30. This was mostly because we stopped to get something to eat, had a GPS issue finding a gas station almost causing us to run out of said gas, and (c) it just is that far from our house in virginia to Fripp Island in South Carolina.

Before explaining the island, I have to write about . Once you get to a certain pint on i95 in SC, gas stations are generally either a bit off of the highway or a bit far apart. The Prius has a cockpit that looks just like that, a cockpit. It's got all kinds of digital gauges, and tells you, to the mile, how far you can gon on your hybridized tank of gas. We gassed up when we left and made it almost here on one tank. Anyway, when the Prius beeped telling us we had 20 miles left, I searched for a gas station on Navigon. It gave me instructions, which we followed. For some reason (my theory is that there was some kind of satellite issue with trees or clouds, or there was a black hole in time and space), we got off the exit and then were told to get back on to I95 headed back south. Problem was, when we got back on I95, the next exit was like 11 miles away. By this time, we had about 17 miles of gas left and that didn't, and that didn't even ionclude the 11 miles to the next exit and the turn back around to get to the gas station. The math just didn't compute, so we started to look at options for calling roadside assistant We are rogues sometimes, and faced with walking multiple miles to the gas station in the dead of night, we decided to go rogue, cross the median, and safely pull back into the traffic stream. Once headed the correct direction, I used Navigon again, but by then we were at code 4 (4 miles from empty Navigon sent us to a completely different gas station, go figure. We had no options at this point, so we turned off the AC, and went until we could go no more, ro so we thought. We basically hypermiled it on electric and brake power to the bigger gas stations right off the highway. Unfortunately, those gas stations were all, get this, CLOSED. Luckily, about a q1uarter of a mile down the road, adn on complete electric power, we made it to a sketchy gas station and gassed up. I ended up losing my earphones because I got out to stretch my legs and didn't realize that I'd lost them until it was too late. We went back and they weren't anywhere on the ground, apparently sprouting legs. Oh well, I have another pair, but it was still annoying. Point was that we did get gas, and we collected another adventurous memory I was able to write about here.

Now to the island. From how Holly has described things here, I wonder if i'll find a cave and meet some people who have been required to enter in a code every few hours. i don't think i'll get lost here thank goodness, but the jungley pines that are here sure could fool me. Pretty much everyone here drives down to the beach and around the island on golf carts. We haven't done this, but we followed a whole convoy of golf carts to the house last night from the beach. The plan is to go to said beach in a bit and check it out. My father-in-law says the beaches are wide and the surf is gentle, so I'll probably enjoy it without breaking an arm, something I did when I had a close up and personal experience with a boogie board off the outer banks of North Carolina.

Should be a fun-packed day, and I'll write about it later prvided Julian doesn't tire me out.